Marvel’s Ultimate universe got blowed up a few years ago with the only survivors making it to the 616-verse being Miles Morales and The Maker (aka evil Reed Richards). We’ll deffo never see the likes of that place agin. Never ever. But waaaaait: The Maker wants to go home - home to the perpetually low-selling universe he originated from? Wope - an entirely “new” one of course that’s conveniently like the Ultimate universe to allow Marvel to do another line of Ultimates-esque, potentially high-selling books in - so Marvel does get to have its cake and eat it too! Ultimate Invasion is the beginning of the totally-not-but-basically-is new Ultimate universe.
I was initially intrigued by Ultimate Invasion - the Ultimate universe was, we all thought, dead and gone forevs, so how was Jonny Hicklad going to finagle his way back into that realm - and The Maker is a pretty good creepy villain. So it’s a little disappointing that the book isn’t just a kind of cheat but also a dull book in itself.
The Maker is a super-mega-ultra-genius so he can just make a machine to do exactly what he wants, ie. dimension hop, and so most of the story takes place in the new experimental Marvel universe 6160 (the Ultimate universe was 1610 and the “real” Marvel universe is 616). He does all of that quite effortlessly because he’s the big brain bad - always riveting to read a character who is this unbeatable and can just do whatever without any effort.
The premise of The Maker becoming the new ruler of the 6160 universe is that he knows all of the heroes’ origin stories from having spent time in the 616 universe. But why would the 6160 universe be the same as the 616 - that is, might there be a different Spider-Man than Peter Parker? That would make sense but I think The Maker made this universe so made the heroes’ origins play out as in the 616 universe so that he could control them better - or something. Spider-Man’s origins were going to be the same as they originally were but Iron Man’s origins are different here. I don’t know. It’s not that well explained, as it often goes with Hiconvolutedman.
What we get as a story is a derivative Orwellian-style setup where the various world factions are in cahoots with one another fabricating conflicts and trading villain roles to distract the populace. Which amounts to familiar characters in fancypants sitting in a room telling us all of this - not the most exciting of ways to do this, and it’s not at all thrilling to read either!
The exposition is occasionally broken up by clones of famous heroes from the future appearing out of nowhere to attempt to destroy The Maker, except, hello?, didn’t Hickman establish earlier that The Maker is unstoppable (even with a comically absurd chunk of his head missing)? That makes this story a real edge-of-your-seater, doncha know.
The opening jailbreak scene isn’t bad and original Ultimates artist Bryan Hitch is back and his art is as Bryan Hitch-y as it’s ever been, replete with pointless Dutch angles a-plenty. But Hickman’s story is no great shakes and amounts to a lot of boring waffle and some unexciting table-setting for future Ultimate-but-not-Ultimate comics. All of which makes Ultimate Invasion an ultimately blah book.
I give it five years before Marvel blow up this forgettable speriment and try another one later with whoever the fanboy flavour of the month is then. (It’s gonna be Hickman again isn’t it? Woohoo…)
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